This blog documents the travels, projects, shows and impressions of a radical poet who wanders around this doomed planet in a search for intelligent life.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Iran’s Green Opposition Endorses Imperialist Intervention in Syria

Editor's note: It was obvious from the start that the so-called Green movement in Iran was nothing less than a pro-American and pro-imperialist ragtag of right wing petit-bourgeois social layers. Naturally, Western liberals enthusiastically supported this fake "democracy revolution". Now they're back this time supporting the blatantly Western backed terrorists of the Syrian "opposition." I'm personally familiar with these right wing Iranian social layers. The owner of The Age of Nepotism is one of them.From World Socialist Website

By Sahand Avedis

One of the prominent Green figures calling for Western military intervention in Syria is the former secretary of the Islamic Student Association (Tahkim Vahdat), Ali Afshari. Afshari was brought to the US in 2004 and in 2006, as a representative of the student movement in Iran; he spoke at a panel discussion organized by Senators Rick Santorum and Joe Lieberman at the US Capitol. He regularly publishes articles on web sites and online news agencies affiliated with the Greens, particularly those run by “liberal” student groups, and appears in Voice of America’s Persian-language programs.

In October he wrote an article titled “Libya and Humanitarian Intervention,” dismissing oil as a factor in NATO’s war against Libya. Advancing the absurd claim that a market-based global economy leaves no place for colonialist policies, he welcomed more such wars to come. He wrote that he was hopeful that improved tactics would “lead to perfection of humanitarian intervention in future instances”.

Afshari went on to glorify the alleged motives of the Libyan war, which caused an estimated 50,000 deaths and installed a pro-Western puppet regime in Tripoli. He wrote: “the purpose of humanitarian intervention is to stop state oppression and create an equal and fair playground for the struggle between pro-government and opposition forces. Humanitarian intervention [as in Libya] is different from the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, since in those countries foreign forces intervened militarily in the absence of any popular protest.”

Such a formula, effectively legitimating imperialist intervention any time popular protests confront an authoritarian regime, gives a blank check for the US to attack any Middle Eastern country where the working class emerges in political struggle. This expresses the profound class antagonism between the working class and the social layer represented by the Greens. On this basis, they give their support to imperialist campaigns for waging war in Syria and preparing war with Iran.